X-Ray Art for Children inspired by Aboriginal Art

This is a great activity I developed and published previously.

It received much interest, so here it is for the first time on my new blog,  Elle and Lou.

 If you enjoy it please follow along for more

 children's art ideas-especially ones that incorporate recycling!

Check out these crazy flip flop fish.

They are made from recycled thongs bases.

This images are inspired by Australian Aboriginal X-ray Art.

This style of art has been documented to have been around for at least 4000 years.

The X-ray style features organs, bones and wonderful patterns as you can see in the examples below.

From Wiki Commons Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

Our goal was not to copy the Aboriginal art style but to appreciate the imagery and history of the indigenous works.

Long neck Turtle

The thong is almost as Aussie as a Vegemite. It is a contemporary icon that exemplifies our laid back lifestyle and as such it seemed a  perfect choice of 'canvas'.

These flip flop fish were completed with pencil and texta in colours that are reminiscent of the ochres used on the x-ray bark paintings. We discussed what the students might consider including and they decided that pattern, a spine, ribs etc and maybe an organ or two could be useful but was not a prerequisite. 

If you were integrating with science or simply wanted to link more closely with biology the students could research animal organs etc or conduct a dissection first (my husband is a science teacher so he gets really excited about this part).

They look great displayed together and the primary students were intrigued to go a find out more about  Aboriginal art. 


If you want to replicate this you could use any old shoe base- so you are recycling too-what can be better?

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